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If only Donald Trump could be Sally Field

The Lowell Sun

Updated:
08/14/2016 06:50:44 AM EDT

By Michael Goldman

Poor Donald Trump. Since the Republican nominating convention ended in mid-July, it seems the wheels have come off his presidential campaign bus in a manner so completely epic as to have never before been seen in the annals of American electoral political history.

Worse still, all of his newest political catastrophes seem to have begun in earnest just after Trump gave a post-convention interview where he decided to finally give voters just a tiny insight into his psyche by publicly revealing for the first time that all he has ever really, truly wanted was just simply "to be liked."

Think of it.

He wasn't striving to be loved like, say, an Oscar Mayer wiener.

Nope, not Trump.

He just craved being liked.

The Willy Loman of politics if you will, that was his goal, with maybe a shoe-shine thrown in.

Hearing his revealing insight during that interview immediately brought to the mind of some older listeners a moment from decades before when Sally Field accepted her Academy Award for Best Actress and declared for one and all to hear, "You like me. You really like me."

Trump hasn't been so lucky.

Since his self-revelatory moment, he has seen his despised opponent, Hillary Clinton vault to huge leads in every conceivable category of every national and state poll.

Most competent? Hillary.

Best prepared? Hillary.

More honest? God, Hillary.

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And because these new polls roll in ceaselessly like the ocean tide one after another, day after day, they force the Donald to deal with the idea that not only isn't he well-liked by many, but that he is loathed by most.

full of second-string business figures, retired surgeons plus current and ex-governors, congressmen and senators?

Didn't they really, really like him then, those thousands who cheered him at every stop; those tens of thousands who contributed to his campaign; and those millions who had actually had taken the time to go out to the polls in state after state to vote for him.

Trump stares in his mirror.

He hasn't changed. His message hasn't changed. His methods for delivering those messages hasn't changed. His hair hasn't changed.

So how could he have gone so quickly from being really, really liked by so many to being really, really loathed by so many more?

Trump continues to stare into that mirror and he longs to see reflected back that winner again, the one who beat the odds by doing it his way.

Instead, each and every day he's forced by the Gods of Fate to look into his mirror at the face of a probable loser, and a huge loser at that.

And who exactly is he losing too?

He's coming in a distant second to "Crooked" Hillary or "Unhinged" Hillary or "Mother of Isis" Hillary and, yes, to the "Devil" Hillary herself.

Well, as Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar, "the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

Nobody told Trump to trash a Gold Star family.

Nobody told Trump to get cute in his endorsement of fellow Republicans.

Nobody told Trump to tweet out an unattractive picture of the wife of Ted Cruz, or to imply that the father of Cruz was involved with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Nobody told Trump to make his ties and shirts in third-world countries.

Nobody told Trump to stiff hundreds and hundreds of subcontractors and end up involved in thousands of lawsuits.

Nobody told Trump to choose as the co-author of his best-selling book a guy brave enough to say 20 years later that the book itself, and Trump in particular, were as phony as a three-dollar bill.

And nobody told Trump to lie so often and about so many different things, that the truth itself would become simply a late-night comedian's punch line.

His mirror doesn't lie, however.

Trump knows. When the history is finally written, he'll be labeled a loser.

And a not well-liked loser one at that.

Michael Goldman is a paid political consultant for Democratic candidates and president of Goldman Associates.

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